Call for Papers

Looking across Product Categories in Marketing Science

Special Issue of the Journal of Business Economics (Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft)

Deadline: 1 December 2014

Editors:

Harald Hruschka, Professor, Department of Marketing, University of Regensburg, Germany and Thomas Reutterer, Professor, Department of Marketing, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

The majority of studies to explain customers’ purchase behavior focus on one product category only, and implicitly assume that customer choices are independent across product categories. However, ignoring cross-category interdependences in marketing response models may lead to biased estimates of marketing effects. Consequently, decisions based on such estimates may result in considerable profit losses. But even studies aiming to discover and measure interdependences between product categories are not free from shortcomings. Several studies assume conditional independence between categories. Others only consider a rather small number of categories. Another limitation accrues from focusing on only one type of dependent variable, as a rule purchase incidence. We also notice that the vast majority of studies exploring multi-category choices deal with grocery categories, while studies for apparel or shoes assortments, financial services, tourism, consumer electronics, etc. seem to be missing completely. It is also remarkable that more sophisticated models with dynamic effects are to date missing. Finally, while contributions using disaggregate response models emphasize the benefits of a multi-category orientation for marketing decisions, they typically only derive qualitative recommendations.

We welcome papers which attempt to overcome the shortcomings mentioned above and contribute over the extant literature. Without claiming to be exhaustive authors of submissions are encouraged to apply exploratory data analytic techniques, aggregate and/or disaggregate market response models as well as optimization, simulation or game-theoretical methods in their contributions.

For more information please follow the link to the complete call-for-papers under

http://www.springer.com/business+%26+management/journal/11573

 

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